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Facebook Messenger App Creates Massive Controversy

First off, lets face it, no one reads the terms of service on anything. If you did, every app would scare you.

Second, the majority of the concerns are related to Android. Apple doesn’t let apps make phone calls or text people without your intervention.

Third, Messenger can do a lot of things like make phone calls and send text messages, so it needs your permission to do that. It’s not a one trick pony.

Fourth… just stop bitching about Facebook privacy. Either deal with it and use it, or close your account and use something else.

You give Facebook the power it needs to do whatever it wants by using it all the time. Without you, they’re nothing.
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The new Facebook messenger app is creating massive controversy among Facebook users, with people practically coming to virtual blows over the new requirement. The main fight is between people who feel that the new app is a huge privacy violation and those who say the app is no different from those that most people already have loaded onto their phones. Facebook is demanding that users download the new app if they want to be able to read and respond to messages sent through Facebook on mobile devices such as smart phones. Facebook users are still able to get their messages the “old fashioned” way directly through Facebook on a computer.

It seems that many people simply do not want the inconvenience of downloading a new app, while other are deeply disturbed at Facebook’s terms of service for the program. It has been reported that the service terms include some unsavory privacy violations to which many users object. One of the scariest conditions, people say, is that by downloading the app, users agree to let Facebook use their phone to take photos and videos without their permission. The terms also allow for Facebook to have full access to all messages, to delete messages at will and to add and delete contacts without users’ prior approval.

Perhaps most disturbingly, news reports state, the app can read through users’ calendars, add and delete private events, and send emails to contacts without the user’s knowledge regarding the event. It can also edit a user’s private text messages. It can make phone calls that might cost the user money and post to social streams on behalf of the user.

The Facebook messenger app is creating massive controversy because the ability for a third party to take control of someone’s personal device to such a great degree has not previously been included in most other apps’ terms and conditions. However, there are some Facebook users who say the whole issue is much ado about nothing.

They say that apps that the majority of people already have installed on their phones contain similar privacy violations, and that corporations already know everything about each user. Earlier today, several news stations jumped on the Facebook apologist band wagon, saying that earlier reports are not accurate, that the app requires permission to do all of the items listed above, and that its terms and conditions are no different from the existing mobile general Facebook app.

Some commentators say that since the NSA and most corporations already have access to most users’ information, it does not really matter what the new Facebook messenger app terms and conditions state. One user said that anyone who uses the social media network is already living in a Big Brother type of environment, and therefore, it is useless to fight it. Another user asked “When did FB become a branch of the CIA?”

Many are saying they will not download the app and will instead choose to send and receive messages on a com

puter or laptop instead of accessing them via a mobile device. The new Facebook messenger app is creating massive controversy, and the debate does not appear to be slowing down. Will Facebook listen, or turn a blind eye since Mark Zuckerberg himself has stated in the past that he does not believe in a person’s right to privacy? He may not believe in privacy, but judging from the outcry, it appears that people do still value the basic freedoms guaranteed to them in the Constitution.